Variable kindnessposthumanist ethics in the fiction of George Saunders

Resumen

This thesis examines the fiction of the award-winning contemporary American author George Saunders and how his fiction presents situations that can be analyzed in terms of posthumanist ethics, especially in regards to human and nonhuman animal encounters and relations. As the first monograph on this author, the thesis may serve as a reference for future analysis of his writing while also serving as the first extended analysis of his oeuvre to date. Furthermore, as an interdisciplinary project that combines not only posthumanist theory and literary theory but various sociocultural theories pertinent to Saunders’s literature, the thesis may be beneficial both to the continued development of new notions of ethics that are more inclusive and to understanding the relevance of Saunders’s fiction to the current American sociocultural climate. The thesis includes an introduction, nine chapters, and a conclusion. Additionally, it includes an exclusive interview with Saunders. The first chapter provides an overview of Saunders and the relevance of his writing to contemporary American culture. His writing can be understood as continuing a line of dark satire in American writing, following Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut and can also be compared to contemporary American authors, especially that of the late David Foster Wallace. The major critical work of Saunders’s writing to date is also described, including that of Adam Kelly, who names Saunders as a member of an informal movement that has come to be called “New Sincerity.” In chapter two, a survey of posthuman theory and the main conceptions of posthumanist ethics are presented, primarily as they apply to nonhuman animals. “The discourse of species” and “the animal question” are also analyzed, and the role of Jacques Derrida’s influential essay “L’animal que donce je suis” is emphasized, along with the theories of Rosi Braidotti, Matthew Calarco, Donna Haraway, Kelly Oliver, Cynthia Willett, Cary Wolfe, Jason Wyckoff and others. Beginning with chapter three, the thesis proceeds chronologically through Saunders’s writing, as published in collections and otherwise. The chapter focuses on one short story, “The 400-Pound CEO,” included in his first short fiction collection, Civilwarland in Bad Decline. Many of the major components of Saunders’s stories are analyzed here in terms of how they function and how they relate to interspecies ethics. Chapter four is devoted to the novella “Pastoralia,” from the collection of the same name, and examines how language, meat, and power are presented in the text and how this relates to Derrida’s concept of carnophallogocentrism and Carol J. Adam’s theories as they relate to woman. In chapter five, the children’s book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and the novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil are scrutinized, the former as an example of a Saunders story that functions in a more traditional and clear way than Saunders’s writings usually tend and the latter in terms of the industrialization of slaughter. Chapter six analyzes the role of nonhuman animals in laboratory studies through the story “93990” from the collection In Persuasion Nation. Chapter seven analyzes the story Fox 8, first released only in electronic form as a Kindle Single, and how Saunders’s anthropomorphic narrator challenges notions of anthropomorphism, while also examining the role of dominionism. Finally, Saunders first novel, the Man Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo, is analyzed in terms of varying posthumanist conceptions that also relate to human and “post-living” others, such as women, enslaved black Americans, and the dead, in a fantastic yet historical setting. Because Saunders is a living writer, this thesis intends to serve as a summary of his career thus far, culminating with the release of his first novel, while also beginning the discussion of Saunders’s fiction on a broader basis.